threateners. When he laid the staff out of his hands, he laid down with it the credit of the Volunteers. They lost the national confidence from that hour. Rude and violent agitators first usurped the power, then divided it, and then quarrelled for the division. The glaring evil of the bayonet drawn for political discussion, startled the common sense of the nation, and drove it to take refuge with the minister. The army, which had been raised amid the shouts of the nation, was now cashiered by its universal outcry. The agitators went down among the common wreck, and, in the subsidence of the general swell and uproar of the popular mind, the fame and virtues of the venerable commander of the Volunteers, alone floated undiminished to the shore.

But, if for one quality alone, the name of this nobleman ought to be held in memory. Perhaps no public individual of his day extended such ready and generous protection to men of ability, in their advancement in the various ways of life. He had two boroughs at his command in the Irish House of Commons, and, in all the venality which so daringly distinguished partisanship in that House, no one ever heard of the sale of the boroughs of Lord Charlemont. He applied his influence to the manly and high-minded purpose of introducing men of talents into the Legislature.

An accidental intercourse with Burke, chiefly in consequence of the character which he derived from the treatise on the Sublime and Beautiful, induced him to serve his interests, by a connexion with the Secretary for Ireland, so well known by the name of single-speech Hamilton.

Hamilton's character is a problem to this hour. A single effort of eloquence had placed him among the hopes of the British senate. He never repeated it. Its reputation, and the friendship of Lord Halifax, then President of the Board of Trade, made him a member of the Board in 1756. Hamilton still continued silent. In four years after, he was made Secretary for Ireland, on the appointment of his noble friend as Lord Lieutenant. In the Irish House, the necessities of his situation, as Prime Minister of the Viceroyalty,

overcame his nervousness, and he spoke, on several occasions, with remarkable effect. But on his return to the English Parliament, his powers were again shut up; and, by a strange pusillanimity, a tenderness of oratorical repute, unworthy of the member of an English public assembly, during the remainder of his life, his voice was never heard. Yet, probably no man led a more anxious and self-condemning life. During this entire period, public distinction, and distinction peculiarly by eloquence, seems to have never left his contemplation. He compiled, he wrote, he made commonplaces of rhetoric, he was perpetually preparing for the grand explosion to which he was never to lay the train. He saw, and we may well suppose with what bitter stings to his vanity, the contemporaries, whose talents he scorned, hastening on in the path which he longed yet feared to tread, and snatching the laurels that had hung down, soliciting his hand. He saw a new generation start up while he pondered, and entering upon contests whose magnitude rendered all the past trivial, and displaying powers which threw the mere rhetorician into the shade, obtain the most magnificent prizes of eloquence. Still he continued criticising, preparing for the great effort that was never to be made, and pondering on the fame which he had already suffered hopelessly to escape, until he sank out of the remembrance of society, and dwindled into the grave. Perhaps literary history has seldom afforded an example of vanity so completely its own punisher; his extravagant sense of the merit of a single effort, strangled every effort to come; he was stiffed in his own fame; his vanity was suicidal.

With a superior of this order, jealous, anxious, and severe, it was impossible that Burke's open temperament, and gallant dependence on his own great powers, should long cordially agree. At the end of two years, he suddenly abandoned the private secretaryship, to which he declared Hamilton, in the spirit of tyranny, had annexed degrading conditions, and in 1763 returned indignantly to England, to take the chances of beginning the world anew.

But the world on which he now

fixed his eyes, wore a different aspect from the humble and cheerless world which he had so long contemplated in his closet. His Irish Secretaryship had made him feel his faculties for public life; it had thrown him into those waves which might waft him on to the most brilliant fortune. He had invigorated every muscle of his mind by the practical labours of office. Those two years, toilsome as they were in the passing, and painful in the termination, had made him a statesman. He was thenceforward marked with the stamp of public life; we hear no more day-dreams of melancholy independence in America. From this moment, he was committed to the cause in England. He buckled on his golden armour, and entered the lists for life within the realm which no man more contributed to adorn and to save. Within two years after his return from Ireland, he commenced this career. In 1765, the Marquis of Rockingham was appointed Premier. Burke was recommended to him as private secretary, and the Minister gladly availed himself of the services of a man, already so distinguished for literary excellence and official ability. This recommendation, equally fortunate on both sides, was chiefly due to Mr Fitzherbert, a man of birth and accomplishment, who had known Burke at Johnson's celebrated club. Of Fitzherbert himself, Johnson has left the following graphic sketch :-" There was sparkle, no brilliancy in Fitzherbert; but I never knew a man who was so generally acceptable. He made every body quite easy,overpowered nobody by the superiority of his talents, made no man think the worse of himself by being his rival, seemed always to listen; did not oblige you to hear much from him, and did not oppose what you said."

Burke's tardy progress to the station for which nature, genius, and acquirement had formed him, is another among the thousand proofs of the fallacy, that talents make their own fortune. We see here a man of the highest abilities, with those abilities directed to the express la bours of public life, associating with a round of leading persons in life and literature, blameless in his private conduct, undegraded by pecuniary difficulty, ardent in spirit, and

giving evidence of admirable qualities for the service of the state; and yet we see this man of talent and diligence, of vigorous learning and public virtue,left to linger in obscurity for ten of the most vivid years of his being, admired and overlooked, applauded and neglected, down to the point of abandoning England, and fixing himself a reluctant exile in a foreign country, and from this fate rescued by the mere accident of club companionship, indebted for the whole change in his prospects, for the interposition between eminence in England and banishment to America, to the casual civility of a good-natured man of conversation. The truth is, that genius is not the quality for this self-elevation. It is too fine, too fastidious, too delicate in its sense of degradation, and too proud in its estimate of its own rank, to take the better and humiliating chances of the world alone. It has the talon, and the plume, and the eye that drinks in the congenial splendour of the sun. But those very attributes and organs are its disqualifications for the work that is to be done by the mole-eyed and subterranean ambition of the routine of public life. This is the evil of all long established governments. Public employ, the object of the most generous of all ambitions, is surrounded with a system of artificial obstacles, a circumvallation of dependence through which no man can make his way by his single assault. Patronage holds the key of every gate of the citadel. Family influence, personal connexion, private obligations, all must sign the passport that admits the new man within the lines and ramparts of this singularly jealous and keenly guarded place of strength. It is only in the great general changes of the state, in the midst of mighty revolutions and sweeping overthrows of established authority, when the old bulwarks are broken down into fragments, that young talent can despise ancient vigilance, force its way over the ruins, and be master, in its own right, unindebted but to its own solitary prowess and self-dependent energy.

Yet all may be for the best. Even in the restraints laid upon the saliency of genius, there may be that good which redounds in securing

no

states from rash ambition, the besetting sin of powerful minds. It may be useful even to the productive services of such minds, that they should undergo in part the training that belongs to delay and disappointment. The pride of talent may be wisely taught that the feelings of a race whose mediocrity it would be ready to trample under its feet, that the commonplaces and forms of society, that even the feeble prejudices which grow up with old institutions, like the moss and weedy blossoms, harmless ornaments round the walls of our castles, are entitled to some share of its regard; that there are other ministers of good on earth, than the impetuous stride and burning glance of genius; that the general genial harvests of social life are not to be ploughed in by the lightning, nor reaped by the whirlwind. At least, we may well rejoice in the alternative which leaves us the quiet of society, undisturbed by revolution. To pass in peace through life is the first gift of government to nations. A few "bright particular stars" may thus be lost to the national eye, glittering for a moment, and then sunk below the horizon for ever. But we may well be content with a sky which gives us the light of day and the seasons in their time, unstartled by the terrors or the wonders of those flaming phenomena which, if they descend to increase the splendour, may come to shock the harmony of the sphere.

composed the Ministry. The Marquis, a simple man, was terrified at what he had done; but a straightforward one, he had the manliness to mention the statement immediate

Burke was now brought into Parliament for Wendover, in Buckinghamshire, by the influence of Lord Verney, and on July the 17th, 1765, received his appointment as private secretary to the Minister. Yet even at this moment his fortunes were on the verge of wreck. His country operated against him; and, as in the crude conceptions of the English populace, every Irishman must be a Roman Catholic and a Jacobite, the old Duke of Newcastle, a man who through life exhibited the most curious combination of acuteness and absurdity, of address in office, and eccentricity everywhere else, instantly adopting the wisdom of the coffee-houses, hurried to the Marquis of Rockingham to protest against his bringing this firebrand into the magazine of gunpowder which then

ly to his new associate. Burke, probably not without some contempt for the understandings of both the noble Lords, satisfactorily shewed that it was even possible to be an Irishman and a Protestant at the same time; and referring to his career in the College, where he had obtained a scholarship, an honour reserved expressly for Protestant students, he at length succeeded in appeasing the trepidations of the two Ministers, and establishing the facts, that,being a Protestant gentleman by birth, he was not a Jesuit, and being educated in the Irish University for the bar, he was not educated for a priest at St Omers.

But it may be easily conceived that this rapidity of suspicion was not palatable to the feelings of a man like its object. He instantly retorted upon the Premier; and declared that his retaining office was thenceforth incompatible with his feelings; that suspicion so easily roused and so readily adopted, would naturally introduce reserve into their intercourse; and that conceiving a half confidence to be worse than none, he must immediately resign. The Marquis listened, but he was an old English gentleman. The dignity of conscious spirit and virtue in Burke attracted only his applause. He desired that the subject should be entirely forgotten, professed himself more than ever gratified by the manliness of his conduct, and refused to hear of his resignation. Burke, of course, gave way to this generous refusal, and proved himself worthy of the most perfect confidence, by his zeal and services during the life of his noble friend, and by many an eloquent tribute to his grave. In one of his speeches in Parliament, several years after the death of the Marquis, he thus feelingly alluded to his appointment and his patron :

"In the year sixty-five, being in a very private station, far enough from any idea of business, and not having the honour of a seat in this House, it was my fortune, unknowing and unknown to the then Ministry, by the intervention of a common

friend, to become connected with a very noble person at the head of the Treasury department. It was indeed in a situation of little rank and of no consequence, suitable to the mediocrity of my talents and pretensions; but a situation near enough to enable me to see, as well as others, what was going on. And I did see in this noble person such sound principles, such an enlargement of mind, such clear and sagacious sense, and such unshaken fortitude, as bound me, as well as others better than me, by an inviolable attachment to him from that time forward."

The new Ministry opened the session of Parliament on the 14th of January, 1766. Burke immediately shewed the value of his accession. His first speech was on American affairs, and his force, fancy, and information, astonished the House. Pitt, (Lord Chatham,) whose praise was fame, followed him in the debate, and pronounced a panegyric (a most unusual condescension) on the new orator. He observed that

66

men who uttered and the men who believed. The whole has too much the air of a battle on the stage. And it must be acknowledged that the mimic spirit of the hostility was well authenticated in the perpetual changes of the actors, in the unhesitating shiftings of their costume, in their rapid transitions from banner to banner, in their adoption night after night of new characters, and their being constant to nothing but a determination to be always before the public, until age or national contempt drove them from the scene. But other things and other times are in reserve for their offspring. We see the gathering of storms that shall try the strength of every institution of England and mankind. A new evil has been let loose upon the earth, from a darker source than any that the timid crimes or colourless follies of past ages ever opened. French Jacobinism has spread through the world. Its Babel was cast down in France, but the fall has diminished nothing of its malignity, and nothing of its power. Its confusion of tongues there has only inducted it into the knowledge of every language on earth, and the scattered strength of atheism and revolt has gone forth to propagate the kingdom of violence, and the idolatry of the passions, round the globe. The multitude in every quarter of Europe are already in the hands of Jacobinism. A spirit of fantastic and scornful innovation is at this time abroad, marshalling every casual discontent into its levy against the liberties and thrones of all nations; every complaint of idleness, of folly, of fortune; of the common chances of nature; even scarcity, disease, the simple inclemencies of the seasons, swell the same muster-roll of grievances with misgovernment; until the signal is given, and with rebellion in the van, and rapine in the rear, the whole sullen battalion is moved against the last refuges of law, government, and religion. Unless some hand mightier than that of human championship drive back the tempter to his dungeon, the ruin of all that deserves our homage is inevitable. The rise or fall of rival administrations will then cease to be a matter of moment to any living being. Be their merits what they may,

the young member had proved himself a very able advocate. He had himself intended to enter at length into the details, but he had been anticipated with so much ingenuity and eloquence, that there was little left for him to say. He congratulated him on his success, and his friends on the value of the acquisition which they had made."

The stirring times through which we have passed, and the still more stirring times which seem to lie before us, throw an air of lightness over transactions deemed momentous in the days of our fathers. The last quarter of a century shoots up between like the pillar of the Israelites, covering all behind us with cloud, and all before us with flame. We have become accustomed to a larger wielding of power for larger consequences,-not armies but nations marching into the field-not empires but continents convulsed with overthrow, or rejoicing in the fracture of their chains,-conspiracies of kingdoms, and triumphs of the world. To us the strifes of domestic party, which excited the passions of our ancestors, have the look of child's play; we hear the angry declamation and the prophetic menace, with something not far from scorn for the